Shaming Children Isn't Good Parenting

Friday

Jun 21, 2013 at 2:14 PM

Over the past few years, we have seen many examples of bad parenting.

We have seen videos of a judge who whips his teenage daughter with a belt for playing a video game, a mentor who shaves a young child's head and makes him run wind sprints in the front yard for doing poorly at school, and a father who makes his daughter stand next to the road while holding a sign explaining how she does not follow house rules.

These parenting techniques are appalling, yet these parents (and parental figures) are often showered with praise and admiration. "That's what this country needs more of," some have professed.

Last week I came across a new "parenting" video. In this case, the mother is holding the video camera while verbally berating her 14-year-old daughter. In the video, the mother cursed out and spoke in very explicit language about Facebook posts. The mother ended the video stating that if the posts continued, she would "beat" her and post that video on Facebook.

The most troubling part of the story (not to minimize how troubling the video is itself) is the comments on the website. Again, comments praised this woman and her video. Comments suggested that after what the mother did, "that girl won't do it again." Even those who seemed to have a problem with the mother's language, they commented, "At least she did not hit her."

When was it that humiliation became a viable parenting technique? When did things change to the point where we think that insulting our children will make them more compliant? Parents talk to their children like this, but are surprised and angered when their children are disrespectful. What affect do we think this parenting style will have on the developing child?

First, many children raised in this type of environment become aggressive. This should make sense. When someone is raised in an aggressive environment, they tend to become aggressive. These tendencies are expressed verbally, emotionally and physically. The way we manage relationships is based upon the types of relationships we had with our parents. As such, children growing up in this environment may learn that love is expressed through abuse and control.

A second possible outcome is that of internalized aggression. That is, they enter into abusive relationships and allow themselves to be mistreated by others. They will likely have difficulty taking control of their lives and managing life's expectations. They become dependent on others to be happy and make decisions. They are submissive and emotionally fragile.

At some point, we need to stand up to these situations. We need to remind these parents this is not acceptable. These are not the methods we need to use to raise emotionally and psychologically healthy children. There is nothing remotely appropriate about these parenting tactics and they must be stopped.

Unfortunately, as long as these people are praised for their actions, change will never happen. It is up to us to speak up and tell these parents that enough is enough.

[ Dr. Berney is a licensed psychologist with Kindelan, McDanal and Associates in Lakeland. Readers are invited to submit questions or comments to DrBerney@thementalbreakdown.com. Dr. Berney is the co-author of "Handbook for Raising an Emotionally Healthy Child." ]